Jeff Donnell | |
|---|---|
 Donnell, c. 1940s | |
| Born | Jean Marie Donnell July 10, 1921 Windham, Maine, U.S. |
| Died | April 11, 1988 (aged 66) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1942–1988 |
| Spouses | William Anderson (m. 1940;div. 1953)John Bricker (m. 1958;div. 1963)Radcliffe Bealey (m. 1974;div. 1975) |
| Children | 2 |
Donnell was born in South Windham, Maine, to Harold and Mildred Donnell, when her father was superintendent at a boys' reformatory in that town. [1] As a child, she adopted the nickname "Jeff" after the character in her favorite comic strip, Mutt and Jeff . [2] [note 1] [1] To avoid gender confusion, she was sometimes billed as "(Miss) Jeff Donnell."
Donnell graduated from Towson High School, Towson, Maryland, in 1938 and attended the Leland Powers School of Drama in Boston, Massachusetts. Later, she studied at the Yale School of Drama. [2] [1]
Donnell was signed to a contract by Columbia Pictures while she was active with the Farragut Playhouse in New Hampshire, and she made her film debut in My Sister Eileen (1942). [3]
She became a fixture at Columbia, working steadily in comedies, mysteries, westerns, and musicals for five years, and then off and on at the studio from 1950 to 1972. During the 1940s she was typically the house tomboy, a plain-speaking sidekick for the glamorous ingenue, and developed a flair for comedy. Columbia did give Donnell the glamour treatment later (in the 1946 Boston Blackie mystery The Phantom Thief , in which she played a troubled heiress), but she never shook the sidekick image. When her Columbia contract ran out, she freelanced at other studios, mostly in low-budget action pictures. She returned to Columbia in 1950. She had met Lucille Ball on the set of the 1948 RKO Radio Pictures production Easy Living ; Ball remembered Donnell and recruited her to play her sidekick in The Fuller Brush Girl (1950).
Donnell continued to play character roles in motion pictures and television; for three seasons, she portrayed George Gobel's wife, Alice, in The George Gobel Show (1954–1957) on NBC-TV. [4] Many of her assignments were for Columbia (notably as Gidget's mother Dorothy Lawrence in Gidget Goes Hawaiian and Gidget Goes to Rome ) [3] and Columbia's TV subsidiary Screen Gems (she played Hannah Marshall in the Gidget television series, [4] : 391 and portrayed Mrs. Bennett in the TV series Julia ). [4] : 548 In 1966 she made five appearances on Dr. Kildare as Evelyn Driscoll, and she played Ethel on the Matt Helm TV series. [4] : 667
Her last Columbia feature was the women's lib-themed comedy Stand Up and Be Counted (1972). Her final recurring role was as Stella Fields, the Quartermaines' housekeeper, in the popular soap opera General Hospital , from 1979 to 1988.
Donnell's first marriage was in 1940 to William "Bill" Anderson, who was her teacher at the Leland Powers Dramatic School. She had her only children with him, Michael Phineas (b. 1942) and Sarah Jane (b. 1948), before their divorce in 1953. [1]
Donnell died of a heart attack on April 11, 1988, aged 66. [5] Her sudden absence from General Hospital was explained away by the writers as her character having won the lottery and quit her job.
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